Abstract:

This paper describes the experimental application to the identification of bank images of a technique previously used to differentiate between consumer goods such as lagers and perfumes where differences were subtle. The approach is based on the use of a battery of adjectives and adjectival phrases which the respondent uses to describe the "personality" of the institution. The initial step is the development of the battery of words and phrases. This is divided into two phases, the 'trigger' sessions, which are used to generate a comprehensive (and too long) list, and the 'charade* sessions which are used to reduce the list to manageable proportions by determining those words or phrases which are the best identifiers of the institutions. The analysis is also critical in order to distill the essential discriminators from the mass of data. A range of multi-variate techniques were used to discriminate between the banks and describe their personalities.